Journalism Professor Wins Covert Award

Elisabeth Fondren, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Journalism, Division of Mass Communication, was recently named the winner of the 38th annual Covert Award for best mass communication history published in 2021 by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC).

The award memorializes Catherine L. Covert, Ph.D., Professor of Journalism at Syracuse University. Dr. Covert, who died in 1983, was the first female professor in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Journalism and the first woman to head the AEJMC History Division. The award has been presented annually since 1985.

Dr. Fondren’s winning submission, “Fighting an Armed Doctrine: The Struggle to Modernize German Propaganda During World War I (1914-1918)” appeared in Journalism & Communication Monographs, 2021, Vol. 23(4) 256–317. Her monograph chronicles the ideas and methods of early German propagandists, including their secret attempts to copy ideas from their enemies, and how World War I conspiracy theories and publicity lessons carried over to World War II and informed Nazi propaganda. 

The History Division will honor Dr. Fondren in August and present a check for $400 as part of the annual AEJMC convention in Detroit, MI, where she will also be recognized as the winner of the 2022 Michael S. Sweeney Award for her article, “‘The Mirror with a Memory’: The Great War through the Lens of Percy Brown, British Correspondent and Photojournalist (1914-1920),” published in the previous volume of the scholarly journal Journalism History. 

Dr. Fondren teaches international reporting, media history, print/online journalism, and feature writing in The Lesley H. and William L. Collins College of Professional Studies. Her research explores the history of international journalism, government propaganda, military-media relations, and freedom of speech during wartime.